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Category: Interviews

Gallowglas, Hester, Wagner & Coe: Four Authors Sound Off on the Writing Life of a Midlister

Gallowglas, Hester, Wagner & Coe: Four Authors Sound Off on the Writing Life of a Midlister

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Children of Amarid-smallJuly 2013 was a month of firsts for me. A book of mine went out of print. A Kickstarter project I launched to fund an interactive e-book died a miserable, unnoticed death. I received my first ever fan art. And on the practical side, the sales numbers for my fantasy novel Dreamwielder got a great boost thanks to its selection as a Barnes & Noble Nook First Look pick, leading to my first ever proper royalty check — not a huge chunk of change, but enough to turn down freelance work and focus solely on my own writing for a few weeks. (Although I still ended up paying my health insurance bill late!)

It’s not exactly the glamorous lifestyle most people think of when they think of a published writer, even an “emerging” author like myself; but it’s one I’ve worked hard for, and one I’m proud of because I know I’ve finally joined the ranks of the SFF author community.

While authors like George R.R. Martin and Neil Gaiman dominate the fantasy bestsellers list and rake in the riches of TV and movie adaptations, the truth is most fantasy authors live a life closer to mine, a life of small successes, financial uncertainty, and near anonymity.

“One of the biggest misconceptions is that writers — all successful, published writers — are rich,” says David B. Coe, a fantasy author who has published over a dozen novels, including two new historical urban fantasy novels under the pseudonym D. B. Jackson. “For most of us, success in today’s market means continuing to be published by a reputable house.”

Coe broke into the fantasy world with his first novel, Children of Amarid, back in 1997, right when the publishing world was about to be turned on its head. “When I started out, I would get oohs and ahhs from people when I mentioned that I had a webpage,” Coe recalls. “Now there are domestic cats with better webpages than mine.”

Since then, the Internet and new technology like e-readers and print-on-demand have irreversibly changed the publishing landscape. Ebook sales skyrocketed. Self-publishing became an accepted alternative for authors to reach a mass audience. In order to adapt and stay competitive, big publishing houses merged with one another and tightened their belts. The days of big advances and promotional budgets for midlister authors is long gone.

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Finding the Best: An Interview with Year’s Best Editors Ellen Datlow, Paula Guran, Rich Horton and Gardner Dozois

Finding the Best: An Interview with Year’s Best Editors Ellen Datlow, Paula Guran, Rich Horton and Gardner Dozois

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The Year's Best Science Fiction Thirtieth Annual CollectionThe following is a Science Fiction and Fantasy Writer’s Chat (SFFWRTCHT) special for Black Gate.

For the first time, I was able to gather four of the Year’s Best editors to chat about genre, how they do what they do, why and more. So here are Ellen Datlow, Paula Guran, Rich Horton, and Gardner Dozois.

SFFWRTCHT: Where’d your interest in SFF come from?

Ellen Datlow: I was reading everything in my parents’ apartment from a very young age. I encountered Bullfinch’s Mythology, The Odyssey, the stories of Guy de Maupassant and Nathaniel Hawthorne. I read all the comic books in my father’s luncheonette, including the ones with ichor on the covers.

Paula Guran: I devoured books of all kinds growing up. Loved mythology and fairy tales. Probably encountered supernatural tales first from an old treasury of American folktales of my father’s and science fiction specifically with Podkayne Of Mars. Although I still read all sorts of material, SF/F became a portion of my reading thanks to my older cousin. She made up SF stories and illustrated them herself — sort of an oral graphic novel – and told them to her younger sister and me.

She also handed me a couple of Edgar Rice Burroughs Mars books with really cool covers and an Andre Norton Witch World book. Double wowzers.

I also read comic books: Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, Aquaman, and Justice League were some of my favorites.

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An Interview with Lonesome Wyatt of Those Poor Bastards

An Interview with Lonesome Wyatt of Those Poor Bastards

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Lonesome WyattI came across Lonesome Wyatt as I nosed about a funnel cake shack in an abandoned amusement park built on a prairie settler boneyard. He had a rotted sack of popcorn in one hand and he dragged a crowbar in the other. Twilight filtered in through a roof hole. Something skittered across his hat. He hummed an old-time dirge.

This being Lonesome Wyatt of Those Poor Bastards. This being the man behind Lonesome Wyatt and the Holy Spooks. This being the author of the pulp horror novel The Terrible Tale of Edgar Switchblade and the composer of its companion album, Behold the Abyss. Which, really, if you’re in the mood for a cloven-hoofed, knife-wielding bounty hunter with step-daddy issues chasing an albino werewolf with supplementary gothic country tunes, there is no better pairing than that which Lonesome Wyatt has provided.

Under normal circumstances…well, you try to avoid talking to mad-eyed men on decrepit fair grounds; but I – being the steadfast and fearsome Black Gate minion I am – AHEMed. Stood my ground. Waited for him to turn around. I am not one to be intimidated. A man can’t hex you by humming. Usually. And this was a man I wanted to talk to.

Lonesome Wyatt turned and sneered, or possibly he smiled; these things are hard to tell. He agreed to do an interview before I had the words out of my mouth to ask. He is a mysterious revelator of mayhem and wonder, and quite possibly he is psychic.*

For your perusal, here lies the exchange Black Gate had with Lonesome Wyatt in that shadowy funnel cake shack…

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HEROIC: An Interview with Andrew Collas

HEROIC: An Interview with Andrew Collas

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HEROIC #1There’s been much discussion lately on Black Gate about Kickstarter: about projects that have reached fruition thanks to crowdsourced funding and projects that have failed to deliver on their promises. Kickstarter’s a way to get stories out that might not otherwise exist and from the outside looks like an interesting way to make one’s passion real. As it happens, I know someone working through that process right now. Andrew Collas is a longtime friend who’s brought plans for his first comic, HEROIC, to Kickstarter. He’s got a copy of the first script online: a mix of super-hero story and spy thriller, beginning with the mysterious death of a hero — and a young woman’s escape from a secret base. I know he feels strongly about the material he’s working with and I thought it’d be interesting to discuss his plans and experiences so far. What follows is an e-mail interview I did with him about heroes, comics, and Kickstarter, all subjects that seemed of interest to this blog.

An Interview with Andrew Collas

Conducted by Matthew David Surridge

What is Zenith Comics, and what is Heroic? What are your plans for the company, the project, and the story?

Zenith Comics is the brainchild of my fever dreams and childhood fantasies. I took the words of Superman to heart when he said [in the Geoff Johns-written Justice Society #1, 2006], “The world needs better good guys,” and Zenith Comics represents my attempt to answer that challenge. HEROIC is the manifestation of that. HEROIC is my story, that starts us in the darkness of today’s comics and (hopefully) moves us through the actions of the protagonists to a brighter future where heroes are once again the ideal and have feet of marble, not clay!

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Steampunk vs. Aliens – 5 Questions with Joshua Palmatier

Steampunk vs. Aliens – 5 Questions with Joshua Palmatier

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Zombies Need Brains, the new small press started by Joshua Palmatier and Patricia Bray, has officially launched its first title via Kickstarter, a new anthology called Steampunk vs. Aliens. I sat down for a virtual chat with Joshua about the new project and the new press.

The project is running now on Kickstarter, and it’s been going great. As of this writing, it sits only a bit over $600 from its funding goal, with over two weeks left. Full disclosure, I’m involved with the project, but I’m also very excited about seeing this reach the market and finding fans of Steampunk and old-school science fiction. There are a ton of great rewards for the Kickstarter and lots of great stretch goals ahead.

Find out more by visiting the Kickstarter page for Steampunk vs. Aliens.

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D.B. Jackson Interviews Ethan Kaille, Thieftaker

D.B. Jackson Interviews Ethan Kaille, Thieftaker

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thieftakerToday I have the pleasure of publishing an interview I’ve had with Ethan Kaille, one of Boston’s leading thieftakers.

Welcome, Mr. Kaille, to my humble office, and thank you for taking time to speak with Black Gate. Please begin by introducing yourself to our readers. Who is Ethan Kaille?

I am no one of consequence, really.  I work in Boston as a thieftaker — for a negotiated fee, I recover property that has been stolen, and return it to its rightful owner.

Surely there is more to your life than thieftaking. What did you do before you began to work in your current profession?

[Long pause.]  I don’t usually like to speak of it, but if you must know, I was a prisoner. Years ago, as a young, foolish man, I took part in a mutiny aboard a ship called the Ruby Blade.  When the mutiny failed, I was placed in the brig, and eventually was tried and convicted.  The Admiralty Court spared my life, but sentenced me to fourteen years at labor on a sugar plantation in the Caribbean.

And before all of that, I was a sailor in the British navy, just like my father before me, and his father before him.  I enlisted during the War of the Austrian Succession and fought at Toulon as a crewman aboard the HMS Stirling Castle.

When was the first time that you became aware of your powers as a conjurer?

I don’t know what you’re talking about.

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An Interview with John Joseph Adams

An Interview with John Joseph Adams

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John Joseph Adams
John Joseph Adams

Nearly every fabulous anthology you’ve read in the past ten years was edited by John Joseph Adams.*

OK, OK, that might be a little much. I’ll restate. Nearly every fabulous anthology you’ve read in the past ten years was either edited by John Joseph Adams or Ellen Datlow. Cross my black heart and bet you a Tardis, that statement’s got sturdy stems.**

Today we focus on Mr. Adams – king taste-maker of spec fic. He’s been a six-time finalist for the Hugo Award and a four-time nominee for the World Fantasy Award. When he isn’t busy creating anthologies and being lauded for them, the man publishes Lightspeed and Nightmare magazines. Don’t forget about that podcast he does for Wired, The Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy. Dude’s busy.

Black Gate honey-badgered our way into a talk with John Joseph Adams about his process and his anthology, The Mad Scientist’s Guide to World Domination. If you haven’t read it, what are you waiting for? Mad scientist stories by the likes of Austin Grossman, Seanan McGuire, David D. Levine, Carrie Vaughn, Naomi Novik, and Theodora Goss? YES, PLEASE! Seriously, the table of contents is next level, ninja. And have you eyed that COVER? It guts you with glass-tubed-screaming-creature awesome. Go buy it. We can wait.

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SF Signal Interviews Scott Taylor on A Knight In The Silk Purse

SF Signal Interviews Scott Taylor on A Knight In The Silk Purse

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The Black Gate district of the city of TauxSF Signal interviews editor and Black Gate blogger Scott Taylor on the occasion of his sixth Kickstarter project: A Knight in the Silk Purse, the follow-up to his enormously successful shared world anthology, Tales Of The Emerald Serpent.

Nick Sharps: What lesson did you learn from the first anthologies campaign that has carried on to Volume II? Are there plans for future anthologies?

ST: Well, we learned that selling fiction is hard, and selling a anthology is even harder. Still, we were happy to get the backing for our first endeavor, and we knew that if we could just produce that work, people would get what we were doing and that would carry over to further volumes. So far, we’ve been right, and this new Kickstarter has built-in stretch goals that could see to the production of up to six full volumes of this series that would take us to the culmination of the story we all set out to tell.

A Knight In The Silk Purse returns to the Free City of Taux, a fantasy port of cursed stones, dark plots, and a cast of characters who have made a name for themselves in the infamous Black Gate District. It is edited by R. Scott Taylor and includes contributions from Martha Wells, Julie Czerneda, Elaine Cunningham, Todd Lockwood, Lynn Flewelling, Dave Gross, Juliet McKenna, and others. With 23 days to go, it is already more than halfway to its target goal of $10,000 (with stretch goals that go all the way up to $300,000).

Read more about the launch of Tales Of The Emerald Serpent here and read the complete interview with Scott here. You can also read his recent article The Joy and Pain of Kickstarter [and How Backed Projects Still Fail].

You can pledge to support A Knight In The Silk Purse at Kickstarter here.

Stephanie Burgis on Scandals in Regency England, Magickal Bathwater, and an Illness That Is No Laughing Matter

Stephanie Burgis on Scandals in Regency England, Magickal Bathwater, and an Illness That Is No Laughing Matter

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Stephanie Burgis in The Pump Room in Bath, England
Stephanie Burgis in The Pump Room in Bath, England

Stephanie Burgis got her first short story published when she was fifteen, and hasn’t stopped since.

Now the author of over thirty published short stories and the Regency fantasy novel trilogy The Unladylike Adventures of Kat Stephenson (Atheneum – US, Templar – UK), she makes her home in Wales with her husband, Patrick Samphire (also a writer).

I had the opportunity to sit down with her and ask about her research process for her novels, the path she’s taken in her career, and on a more personal note, her life with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.

Stephanie and I also collaborated on some jewelry pieces I designed to tie in with her novel trilogy, and here we also share the story behind those pieces and the various hurdles we had to overcome to get them into production.

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Goth Chick News: Hanging with Head Smash Creator Vlad Yudin

Goth Chick News: Hanging with Head Smash Creator Vlad Yudin

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image008At this year’s Chicago Comic and Entertainment Expo (“C2E2”), you couldn’t spit a piece of gum without hitting a promotional plug for Head Smash.

To be honest, you couldn’t spit a piece of gum without hitting a lot of unusual things at the May event, but Black Gate photog Chris Z and I couldn’t help but notice that the sheer quantity of Head Smash promotion was on par with the visual assault launched by Marvel for its own upcoming releases.

We had to admit, the curiosity factor was being driven off the scale for a graphic novel that hadn’t yet been released — not to mention an indy film adaptation barely into pre-production.

I had read that Yudin was creating Head Smash (penned by Erik Hendrix and illustrated by Dwayne Harris) for Arcana Comics, as well as writing the film adaptation of the story.  He is also producing and adapting the film’s screenplay with The Twilight Saga producers Mark Morgan and Michael Beckor.

So thanks partially to our nosiness–  but mostly to the tenacity of the PR company handling Head Smash and its creator — Chris and I got an early morning exclusive chat with the Russian-born-US-raised writer, director and producer Vlad Yudin.

And yes, I admit it, there’s no way I’m not going to talk to a guy named “Vlad…”

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